108 Fran Lebowitz Quotes About Metropolitan Life In a Complicated World
This remarkable American author is definitely worth reading about. Fran Lebowitz is known for her sardonic social commentary of American life through her New York eyes. She is also a public speaker worldwide and occasionally takes on acting in special guest star roles, on national and cable TV shows and series. Always a person of interest even from an early age, Fran managed to shake up not only her Jewish born and raised family, but also the school she attended. Being expelled for bad influence and dressing up as Fidel Castro was surely too forward for a suburb resident.
Her most famous books “Metropolitan Life” and “Social Studies” are still popular today. Surely if you too were good friends with Toni Morrison and Martin Scorsese, as well as having been hired by Andy Warhol as a columnist, would be enough to make everyone want to hear what you had to say. Read on to find an incredible selection of quotes she has stated and be flabbergasted by some and amazed by the wittiness of others. Whichever way she expresses her outlook, it definitely isn’t usual.
Table of Contents
- Best Fran Lebowitz Quotes
- Fran Lebowitz Quotes on Love
- Fran Lebowitz Quotes About New York
- Fran Lebowitz’s Funny Quotes
- Fran Lebowitz Quotes On Images
Best Fran Lebowitz Quotes
- Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy. Fran Lebowitz
- Humility is no substitute for a good personality. Fran Lebowitz
- Those who use the word ‘lifestyle’ are rarely in possession of either. Fran Lebowitz
- No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million. Fran Lebowitz
- Life is something to do when you can’t get to sleep. Fran Lebowitz
- I don’t believe in anything you have to believe in. Fran Lebowitz
- America is a great idea, so that’s why it’s a great country. Fran Lebowitz
- Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness. Fran Lebowitz
- A salad is not a meal, it is a style. Fran Lebowitz
- There’s nothing like being old to be sure of everything. Fran Lebowitz
- All style is personal – that’s what distinguishes it from fashion. Fran Lebowitz
- The second I learned to read in first grade, when I was 5, I preferred it to life. And I still do. Fran Lebowitz
- The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Fran Lebowitz
- I hate money. It is boring and it is arithmetic. The two things I hate the most. Fran Lebowitz
- Even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places. Fran Lebowitz
- If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract teach him to deduct. Fran Lebowitz
- What’s the point of being young if you’re not going to make new things, I wonder? Fran Lebowitz
- To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire. Fran Lebowitz
- Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine. Fran Lebowitz
- That which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights. Fran Lebowitz
- Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step – it is an old business procedure. Fran Lebowitz
- I wouldn’t say that I dislike the young. I’m simply not a fan of naïveté. Fran Lebowitz
- There’s too much democracy in the culture, not enough in the society. Fran Lebowitz
- Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn’t agitate against human nature. Fran Lebowitz
- Children are the most desirable opponents at Scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat. Fran Lebowitz
- You can’t go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do. Fran Lebowitz
- When Toni Morrison said ‘write the book you want to read,’ she didn’t mean everybody. Fran Lebowitz
- I don’t like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help. Fran Lebowitz
- I never met anyone who didn’t have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood? Fran Lebowitz
- Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions. Fran Lebowitz
- When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. Fran Lebowitz
- Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it. Fran Lebowitz
- You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness. Fran Lebowitz
- Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that is too nourishing. Fran Lebowitz
- I, personally, have never been able to throw a book away. I have seen books, like in trash, and to me it’s like seeing a human head in the trash. Even if it’s a horrible book. Fran Lebowitz
- In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. Fran Lebowitz
- If there had been a job of being a reader, I would have taken that, because I love to read and I don’t love to write. That would be blissful. Fran Lebowitz
- I think one manifestation of integrity is holding a grudge. Saying no is a little different. Holding a grudge is the modern equivalent of having standards. Fran Lebowitz
- Presently it appears that people are mainly concerned with being well rested. Those capable of uninterrupted sleep are much admired. Unconsciousness is in great demand. This is the day of the milligram. Fran Lebowitz
- To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons? Fran Lebowitz
- While clothes with pictures and/or writing on them are not entirely an invention of the modern age, they are an unpleasant indication of the general state of things. … I mean, be realistic. If people don’t want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater? Fran Lebowitz
- Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion-picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word ”collectible” as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success. Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz Quotes on Love
- I love being in love. I don’t think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive. Fran Lebowitz
- The main symptom of falling in love is that you lose your intellectual prowess. Fran Lebowitz
- What starts love is your ability to stupefy and blind yourself to the point of being able to fall in love. What stops it is waking up. Fran Lebowitz
- This idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. It’s not human nature. Fran Lebowitz
- There’s no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn’t be lovelorn. Fran Lebowitz
- If you can stay in love for more than two years, you’re on something. Fran Lebowitz
- I’m not interested in being a wife. I’m interested in being an empress. Fran Lebowitz
- Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a drug. It distorts reality, and that’s the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw. Fran Lebowitz
- The thing you love right away, don’t do it, because that’s the very thing that’s going to be your addiction for the rest of your life. Fran Lebowitz
- I happen to love a good run almost as much as sex. Like sex, there are often times I don’t think I’m interested until I’m into it. Unlike sex, I do have to get out of bed and into the elements. I hate leaving bed. Fran Lebowitz
- People who get married because they’re in love make a ridiculous mistake. It makes much more sense to marry your best friend. You like your best friend more than anyone you’re ever going to be in love with. You don’t choose your best friend because they have a cute nose. Fran Lebowitz
- I could not possibly be in a relationship now for more than six days. When I was younger, I might have said six months, although I think the longest relationship I was ever in was three years. Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz Quotes About New York
- I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it’s not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person. Fran Lebowitz
- I’d like to decide who comes here. I’d like to be the admissions director of New York. Fran Lebowitz
- Sarcasm: what they have in New York instead of jacuzzis. Fran Lebowitz
- When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough. Fran Lebowitz
- There’s nothing better for a city than a dense population of angry homosexuals. Fran Lebowitz
- Without these tourists, New York would be fantastic. I don’t want them to come. Stay home! Fran Lebowitz
- I have a double policy, which would also solve immigration: I would stand at the border of New York City and I would say, “You can come here to live, but you can’t come here to visit.” Fran Lebowitz
- If you live in New York and you have a guest room, you have guests. So I think it’s best not to have a guest room. Fran Lebowitz
- I walk a lot in New York, not for the exercise but to get from place to place, and because it’s the way of having the least contact with human beings. Fran Lebowitz
- New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from. Fran Lebowitz
- In New York we have zillions of different kinds of people, many of them hate each other, but violence based on that hatred is really uncommon here. Fran Lebowitz
- Tourism as a number-one industry is a terrible, terrible idea for any city, especially New York. Fran Lebowitz
- New York’s not exactly antiseptic. It could be clean and less dangerous, and not horrible, not under a tidal wave of tourists. Fran Lebowitz
- In New York, people are very overbooked. You say, ‘When do you want to have dinner?’ It’s May. They say, ‘What about October?’ And then they complain: ‘Oh you can’t believe how booked up I am.’ Fran Lebowitz
- There are certainly things that are better than when I was young, and there are things that are worse. New York City, it’s worse. There’s no question. Fran Lebowitz
- New York was always more expensive than the other places, even when it was going bankrupt. In other words, in 1971, New York was expensive for someone with no money. For anyone. Fran Lebowitz
- If there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like. Fran Lebowitz
- The other day I read that last year 58 million tourists came to New York … where a puny eight million people are trying to live. Unless they own a hotel chain, I don’t think a single one of these eight million people are happy about this. Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz’s Funny Quotes
- I prefer dead writers, because I don’t see them at parties. Fran Lebowitz
- Never judge a cover by its book. Fran Lebowitz
- Success didn’t spoil me, I’ve always been insufferable. Fran Lebowitz
- If you’re going to America, bring your own food. Fran Lebowitz
- If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum. Fran Lebowitz
- I always liked people who are older. Of course, every year it gets harder to find them. Fran Lebowitz
- I believe in talking behind peoples’ backs. That way, they hear it more than once. Fran Lebowitz
- Never allow your child to call you by your first name. He hasn’t known you long enough. Fran Lebowitz
- Your life story would not make a good book. Don’t even try. Fran Lebowitz
- Screenwriting is not an artform, it is a punishment from God. Fran Lebowitz
- If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail. Fran Lebowitz
- If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass. Fran Lebowitz
- Sleep is death without the responsibility. Fran Lebowitz
- Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying. Fran Lebowitz
- The favored mode of transportation is infecting a visitor and then hoping that he goes someplace. Fran Lebowitz
- The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink. Fran Lebowitz
- Never relinquish clothing to a hotel valet without first specifically telling him that you want it back. Fran Lebowitz
- There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance. Visitors who wish to remain inconspicuous are advised to choose the latter. Fran Lebowitz
- How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses. Fran Lebowitz
- Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut?? Fran Lebowitz
- I’ve done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not. Fran Lebowitz
- Writers get exactly the right amount of fame: just enough to get a good table in a restaurant but not enough so that people are constantly interrupting you while you’re eating dinner. Fran Lebowitz
- [On parenthood:] You can’t change your mind–you know, and say, this isn’t working out, let’s sell. Fran Lebowitz
- [On not reading newspapers:] If something important happens, your mother calls you. Fran Lebowitz
- Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk. Fran Lebowitz
- Luckily when you drive a cab there are two things: You don’t have a boss in the cab with you, and you are not facing the people that you are making money from. Fran Lebowitz
- Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won’t feel like watching. Fran Lebowitz
- First of all, nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs. Fran Lebowitz
- As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you. Fran Lebowitz
- Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. Fran Lebowitz
- Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met. Fran Lebowitz
- Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries. Fran Lebowitz
- If food did not exist it would be well-nigh impossible to get certain types off the phone, as one would be unable to say, ‘Look, I’ve got to run but let’s have dinner sometime soon.’ Fran Lebowitz
- If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let’s Make a Deal. Fran Lebowitz
- Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come. Fran Lebowitz
- Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens. Fran Lebowitz
Fran Lebowitz Quotes On Images
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